Longing for refuge. (part 1)

I spent half my afternoon in a refugee camp.

Doctors Without Borders set it up in Prospect Park in Brooklyn. Don’t let the name fool you, it’s originally a French organization—Médecins Sans Frontières—that existed for 20 years before the first U.S. branch opened. I was appalled to notice my own surprise at the fact that there are folks who give up time and money for altruistic purposes without the prompting of the U.S. and don’t even seem to need our help to get it done.

Anyway, a grand guide named William led my little group around the small site, a hair-pin swath between tent-like stations showing us the kind of shelter 15 people might live in, a toy car that had been made out of aerosol cans, the water station, the latrine, the cholera quarantine. William was a good, clear, un-manipulative guide. There was no plea for money or paralyzing guilt-inducing comments, although it would have been easy to make them. After showing us the shoes made from tires, it would be so very easy to say, “Look at your shoes. How much did they cost? Do you know how many packets of basic nutrition for malnourished 5-year-olds we could provide with that, the price of one of your 20 pairs of shoes?”

But there was none of that. Just the simple invitation to imagine for a few minutes what it might be like to take your infant to get a measles vaccine from a tent, or carry your little sister for miles over landmine-infested ground.

I went to the exhibit with my professor and friend, Christina Marin. She and I had showed up a few hours earlier at the same matinee of Kingdom, a show about the Latin Kings that was part of the New York Musical Theatre Festival. Kingdom was an intimate production, set in Harlem, about revenge, loyalty, manipulation, honor and love. Forgetting the blurb that had told me it was about a real gang—a “nation”—I was enamored in the first act by this apparent family that grabbed kids out of the hopelessness and impotence of growing up not-white in a ghetto, and eschewed “respect, honor, community, love” and prayer to the “king of kings”.

And then it turned out to be about power. Revenge. Taking control of “justice” in order, they said, to please God. “It’s what God would want you to do,” they said to Juan, compelling him to kill their brother’s killer. My willing belief and hope crashed, just as the playwright planned. “When does the cycle of revenge stop?” Marisa accused at the end, singing to us, the audience-turned-gang-members.

What kind of person is willing to call it “brave” to turn to their enemy with love rather than a demand for payment? Why would anyone do such a ridiculous thing?

At brunch this morning, John told us about a seminar in which they are discussing “eros and allegory.” John is our upstairs neighbor and friend of my roommate, Christine’s, from Harvard. John is beginning his doctoral work in philosophy of religion at Yale. There is debate, he says, over what love is. So nice to know the experts haven’t figured it out, either. So this seminar is, in part, examining the debate among philosophers and theologians throughout history over whether love can have the element of desire and longing that is rather inherent in the thing (State of being? Verb? Feeling?) called “eros.” In other words, is it really “love” if it is also a quest to satisfy a personal desire?

Later tonight, after eating my dinner of leftover black beans and sweet potato standing in the kitchen, I sat down with Christine to watch Lucky Number Sleven. A movie about identity and revenge. What I want to know is, if you can’t become Dread Pirate Roberts, what does a man who’s made a life of revenge do once the avenging is done? What then fills the longing? What kind of life can you have? What kind of living do you do?

Entering the refugee camp, William showed us a photograph of about 7 women, children and a young man in apparent flight through a shanty town. It was taken in Lebanon earlier this year. “The people who are most affected [by violent conflict],” he said, “are the women and children...and older people...well, everyone is affected, but the people who are most affected are the non-combatants.” The people who are “just trying to live peacefully with their families.”

“Just trying to live” and yet end up being the object of someone’s revenge.

I began to wonder, who is really living peacefully? And at what cost to others’ peace? I began to wonder how many of us who say we want peace have any idea what peace costs? Are we willing to pay the price? Is peace worth the price? History and the ghetto seem to scream NO.”

Can our love for God have longing in it? Can his love for us have longing? Is it not the longing for lost children, husbands, wives, fathers, mothers that drives those who want “peace” to commit murder? Perhaps our longing is misunderstood, or taken in fact to be smaller than it actually is. Perhaps the longing is of a magnitude that not even the imagined perfect life would quell it.

Where is the country where I can truly live in peace—and is my notion of peace simply that my children will not be murdered or be sent to war? That I will be able to live in my own house and buy my own food as long as I want? Does it extend to the whole of the city in which I live? The state? The country? The continent? The planet? Just how much peace is enough for me? And if I am willing to accept a peace within my acceptable boundaries, and accept no-peace without them...

How big is my longing? Where do I seek refuge?

:: about the photo: "The Refuge Stane is a solitary stone above the Scottish Korean War Memorial...[that]still has significance as a functioning memorial stone for contemporary Christians...two horizontal bars instead of the customary single bar can be seen on the cross. This form of the cross is sometimes referred to as the Patriarchal Cross, and is apparent on an early seal of the Convent of St. John in Jerusalem." It is in West Lothian (adjacent to "Midlothian"!), Scotland. ::